The gaoler who walked to London
Every so often the whole shape of a family’s history turns on one person doing more than their job asked. For the Kables, that person was a turnkey at Norwich Castle Gaol named John Simpson.
A baby with no papers
In the autumn of 1786 the female convicts at Norwich were ordered to a prison hulk at Plymouth, ready for transportation. Susannah Holmes had an infant son, born in the gaol that February. When she reached the hulk the captain would not take the child — he had no papers and no authority to be there. Susannah was expected to hand him over and go without him.
She refused. By the account that has come down to us she said she would sooner die than leave him, and in the end pressed the baby back on Simpson with the words do what you will. What Simpson did was extraordinary.
On foot to the Home Secretary
Rather than surrender the child to a workhouse, Simpson set out for London with the baby to put the case directly to Lord Sydney, the Home Secretary after whom the town would later be named. An innkeeper’s wife is said to have cared for the child while Simpson pressed his petition. A gaoler had no standing to lobby a minister of the Crown; he did it anyway.
A story in the newspaper
What tipped it was print. On 11 November 1786 the Norfolk Chronicle laid out the whole affair, and the public took the family’s side. A subscription was raised to give them a start in the colony, and the government agreed that the baby should go back to his mother and that Henry Kable, the child’s father, should sail with them. A private hardship had become a public cause, and it worked.
The money raised bought the family a parcel of goods for New South Wales. What happened to that parcel — and the court case it led to — is told on the Cable v Sinclair page. As for the gaoler: the Kables never forgot him. One of the sons born to them in the colony was named John.
Son of the First Fleet by Tony Gaudry follows the child at the centre of all this, Henry Kable Junior, from that beginning through his own long life in the colony.
Common questions
Who was John Simpson?
John Simpson was a turnkey, or gaoler, at Norwich Castle Gaol. In 1786, when the infant son of the convicts Henry Kable and Susannah Holmes was refused a place on the prison hulk, Simpson carried the baby to London himself and petitioned the Home Secretary, Lord Sydney, so the family would not be separated.
How did a newspaper change the outcome?
The Norfolk Chronicle published the story on 11 November 1786. Public sympathy followed, a subscription was raised for the family, and the government agreed not only to keep the baby with his mother but to let Henry Kable travel with them on the First Fleet.
Did the Kables remember the gaoler?
Yes. Among the children Henry and Susannah later had in the colony was a son they named John — by family tradition, in honour of John Simpson.